‘You mean, these poor girls could get pregnant again because you use them in the flesh trade business?’ I shot back.
‘I ensure that their lives are as comfortable and normal as possible,’ Bradshaw reasoned. ‘That means experiencing every part of life that we do. Including sex. Why should they miss out on such divine pleasure?’
The breath of a muffled whisper from Ritchie tickled my ear. ‘Don’t provoke him. Just keep him talking till the cops get here.’
I ignored Ritchie. ‘And make heaps of money on them through a prostitution ring?’ I hissed. ‘Isn’t that the blood money you wrote me your cheque from?’
Bradshaw’s face darkened. ‘I’ve helped you financially and treated you with immense respect, from the beginning,’ he snapped. ‘I left an important meeting in Paris to come here and share my deepest thoughts with you.’
Only because you’re afraid of me!
He must have believed Mez and Carlos when they frantically called him seeking his advice. Bradshaw slammed his cup of tea on the revolving table. A small jug on the tray tipped over and a thick jet of milk bled on to the plaid carpet.
What’s taking Aaron so long?
Hoping to buy more time, I decided to switch tactics.
‘It’s just that … don’t you see you’re hurting other women like your sister, rather than helping them?’ I mumbled, sniffing into my inhaler.
Bradshaw’s eyes shone with a schizoid gleam. Yet, a chink of melancholy drifted from the depths of his callous stare like a weak scent of life in a comatose patient.
‘My sister, Lillian was – and is – my life-force,’ he insisted. ‘Our parents were shot dead at home when I was nine. I guess it involved a drug cartel. Lillian was six at the time. We were in Ohio back then. Lil and I were shipped to an orphanage in Dayton. Lil was mentally challenged but she was persevering and enterprising – a spark of sunshine in this ill-defined go-nowhere world that I hated. I didn’t want any part in this world, but I willed myself to go on for her. I cared for her, fed her, bathed her, sang her to sleep, spent time with her. She took care of me, too, in whatever way she could. Her golden curls, her innocent laughter, her blind faith in me …’ His voice faded into a straggle of uneven breathing as he glowered into the distance with the expression of a man on his way to being exorcised. ‘Then we got separated at the orphanage in Dayton. A couple from Pennsylvania adopted Lil. Shortly after, I was sent to a foster home in Raleigh. Not the best of places. North Carolina is a piece of shit and I detested the neo-Confederate culture of the South. The so-called caregivers were heartless devils.’ He bent down to raise the trouser of his right leg. Then he rolled down a nylon sock to reveal a morbid black cast. He pushed a pin on it. A stunned gasp issued from my lips when the lower half of his leg came off. He waved the prosthetic in front of my face before clipping it back on. Ritchie looked equally mortified.
‘Th-they broke your leg?’ I stuttered.
Bradshaw disregarded my question. ‘I missed Lillian sorely,’ he went on. ‘I stole money and hitchhiked all the way from Raleigh to Allentown, where Lil was. I lived on the streets for weeks until I found her. Her foster parents wouldn’t keep me so I found a construction job, which landed me cheap board and room. I visited Lil everyday for six years. She was in a special school and she was happy. One day, her folks were out and the babysitter they hired ran out on Lil. When I dropped by, I found her crying at home all alone. So, I took her out to Cedar Creek Park, a couple miles away. We had a lovely picnic in the Rose Garden. On our way back home that evening, a gang of drunken guys teased and laughed at her. When I protested, they beat me up and tied me to a tree. Then they pounced on her and raped her one by one … right before me. They shoved broken beer bottles into her and pulled out her uterus. There were no cell phones back then. When they left, I managed to break free from the tree and ran to the street, begging for help.’
My heart lurched with a sliver of sympathy. When I glanced at Ritchie, I saw that he looked as discomfited.
‘She died on the way to a hospital. She was twelve,’ Bradshaw whispered. ‘Since then, I have realised my life’s purpose – to make women like her shoulder the burden of all the agony my sister suffered so that they rise to be martyrs, just like Jesus.’ He let out a grunt, something between a satirical snort and a sardonic laugh. The disturbing magnetism of his snigger drew my gaze to his face. Behind the irises of his dilated pupils, there was not an iota of soul, just a blanket of stilted emptiness, which glazed his features with the insouciance of a zombie.
I broke out in a cold sweat. This man was a permanently traumatised waif who had lost his mind to tragedy. If I had to put it less euphemistically, he was genuinely deranged – a sociopath with delusions of grandeur.
‘Jesus Christ bore the collective burden of all wrongdoings in the world,’ Bradshaw declared. ‘That’s what I’m encouraging these young women to do, so that they attain salvation in the afterlife. I see them as incarnations of my sister. My inspiration from Christ’s selflessness led me to rechristen Candela as Bread Breakers’, when I funded them 10 years ago.
‘After Lillian died, I was carted off to the Fannings, to a new set of foster parents in Bloomington. It’s a small, sleepy town in Indiana. I spent a few months there. Aiden McLeod, a fellow foster kid from Raleigh persuaded me to join him in England after the Gregersens adopted him. I had once saved that fucking moron in Raleigh – when he was on the verge of committing suicide. Since then, I’ve been the closest thing to a brother for him.’
No wonder McLeod had kept mum about Bradshaw when the Squad was hot on his heels. Bradshaw had clearly won his loyalty for life.
A grating recollection scavenged on my mind – Aiden McLeod’s sudden email of consent to an interview with Bradshaw, right after my undercover expedition at Bread Breakers’. Now, I realised why Bradshaw had agreed to see me: to find out how much I knew … of what I knew. He and McLeod were in on this together.
Aiden McLeod, for his part, had mediated between Bradshaw and his lackeys so carefully that none of their minions, except a handful like Mez and Carlos, had an inkling of who the real don was.
‘Wasn’t he Aiden Gregersen then?’ I asked.
‘Aiden kept his biological father’s name … just like I did,’ Bradshaw replied smoothly. ‘The Gregersens were extremely wealthy. They ran a thriving pharmacy in Wapping. In Bloomington, the Fannings did their best to keep me comfortable but I’d made up my mind. It was 1980. I burned their house down on Christmas Eve. I hid behind the trees in the Fannings’ garden and watched it all go up in flames. Then I jumped on the Amtrak to New York. From there, I was just a boat ride away to England. I was sixteen.’
I recalled The Herald-Tribune article I had read last year, referencing the Fannings’ fight for insurance money in a mysterious Christmas Eve housefire. I stared down at my feet, dazed. It wasn’t the Fannings’ greed – it was Melvin Bradshaw’s remorseless evilness.
‘Aiden’s adoptive dad, Eric, processed all my papers and offered me a job as a cashier in his shop,’ Bradshaw revealed. ‘I lived with the Gregersens and earned my stripes in the business. I’d already missed middle and high school in the US. So, Eric charted out a plan of action to help me complete my education. Because of my background and gap years, it was difficult to gain entry into an inner-city school. A counselor we met had me take an IQ test. It turned out that I fell in the ‘genius’ category – probably like you. Eric pulled some strings and flaunted my IQ certificate everywhere until it got me a chance to complete my GCSEs and A-levels at home in two years.’
If Eric had taken the trouble to approach a counselor for an IQ test, hadn’t he obtained regular psychiatric services for his troubled son? Maybe young Melvin had charmed him so much that he had never sensed anything amiss. I was too chicken to ask.
Bradshaw rose from his seat. ‘Soon, I earned a Bachelor’s in Economics from Oxford. Later did an Executive MBA from the London Business School.’ He began pacing back and forth i
n front of the fireplace. ‘By then, Eric had retired and handed over his business to me. I renamed it as the Eric Gregersen Group and got a backing from venture capitalists to expand it. Aiden went on to launch his media agency, Pinwheel Interactive.’
‘When did this …?’ The term ‘sex racket’ was floating in my mind. I groped for a better word. ‘When did this, uh, care home charity work start?’
‘I met an elderly lady at a London art gallery – Valerie Rousseau – a genre artist who founded Candela as a tribute to her dead daughter. The daughter was mentally challenged,’ Bradshaw explained. ‘Val’s husband deserted her ages ago and she had just handed the care home’s operations over to her nephew, Simon Webb.’
Simon Webb whom I had first met … Dr Tahseen’s reference to Valerie Rousseau the day Jesse Krantz and I prevented that surgery on Asha – it all came racing back now.
‘Val was poorly and Simon needed money. So, I pitched in as a secret investor and recommended that the board establish a committee of sorts. It started out as a small team, but eventually spiralled into a national committee for the disabled. No one knew of my involvement or contribution. A group of lousy jackasses from the government renamed it as the Committee of Rehabilitative Care for the Mentally Disabled. Eventually, I struck similar arrangements with three other care homes in the city.’
So, that’s what Jeff Stuart found out, I recalled from my discussion with Gretchen Friedland.
‘We made money through clients. These residents could keep them company whenever they wanted entertainment,’ Bradshaw cackled. ‘The care homes received commissions. Virgin women brought us the highest rates. Those who got pregnant were the best sources of cord blood, which we supplied to EGG’s pharma division in Warsaw for stem cell research projects. We also sterilised many of these women because we wanted to keep them around for other things. The extra money from their clients was re-invested back into the stem cell research.’
Bradshaw strode towards a U-shaped Demilune desk across the couch and seated himself on a porter’s chair. ‘EGG was buying out a bunch of smaller companies. So, I hired large teams to support this underground operation—mainly refugees and immigrant students who weren’t getting jobs anywhere. I arranged for resident permits and placed them in various companies I owned and controlled, so that they would do my bidding. As I grew more powerful, I began to develop my own brand. My personal trademark is the falcon. That comes from a souvenir my birth parents once left me. It’s all I have of them.’
He retrieved a small gilded treasure chest box from his desk drawer, walked back to us and flipped it open. An antique white bird lay inside, its scaled broadwings majestically poised to fly and its aureolin yellow beak parted, as if it was preparing to strike an unassuming prey.
‘I brought this with me to England,’ Bradshaw was saying, waving the box at us. ‘It has always been my good luck charm. Today, every vehicle in my fleet has a falcon car-hanger. When my reputation began preceding me, I realised it was critical to preserve it.’ He slipped the box into his suit pocket and returned to his desk.
‘And then, two years ago, I met a widowed lawyer at a charity event in London. Nidhi Sawant was a defense solicitor at the Snaresbrook Crown Court at the time. She’s got a lot of legal, political and media clout from her years at Snaresbrook. I charmed Nidhi into my life. I’ve been leveraging all her contacts ever since. Got tonnes of free PR, too. She thinks I’m going to marry her now, that foolish cow!’ Bradshaw scoffed, flashing a cocky grin.
As an afterthought, he added, ‘Well, Nidhi wanted the high life too, you know: the glamour and power that come with all the wealth. So, that was a fair trade-off.’ He shot a finger out at me. ‘Once I learned about your investigation and realised you were living with her, I decided I’d have to get rid of her, too. For now, she’ll be handy to do some damage control for the mess you’ve created for me, but then …’
‘Where have you kept the children?’ I squeaked, uncrossing my legs. As I shifted my position, a stabbing jet of pain engulfed me. Under the pretext of folding my arms, I cupped one of my breasts as inconspicuously as possible and closed my eyes in endurance. I felt Ritchie’s palm on my back.
‘Your questions never stop, do they?’ Bradshaw intoned coldly.
He dug back into the drawer. A swishing sound followed. My eyes flew wide open. An anguished howl skewered my eardrums from behind me. I swung around. Ritchie was slumped on the floor beside me. A growing puddle of blood tinted the carpet before him. I screamed and fell to the floor beside him. Reams of blood flooded my hands as I tried to apply pressure on both his legs – I didn’t know where Bradshaw had shot him. Ritchie’s sea-green pupils constricted with insufferable agony but a sliver of clarity layered his disorientation.
‘Try to get outta here, San!’ he groaned.
I scooted behind Ritchie and tried to drag him towards the door – a pathetic attempt to scarper from an unhinged ogre when my efforts to buy time had disastrously backfired.
‘San, watch out!’ Ritchie called out weakly. The next instant, I slammed into the wall behind me. The impact of that blow to my head sent a bronze sculpture of galloping horses from a vintage Parson table in a corner crashing onto the floor. I slid down the wall until I landed on the floor. The sidelines of my vision caught an image of Bradshaw looming before us, the barrel of an automatic thrust against Ritchie’s temple. Holding his bleeding right calf with one hand, Ritchie flailed his other arm and tried to kick at Bradshaw with his left leg. Bradshaw placed one of his boots on Ritchie’s left foot to keep it still. He let out another injured howl.
A metallic taste crept into the roof of my mouth.
Oh God! Am I going to lose Ritch too?
I would never forgive myself if he died. I crawled over to Bradshaw and clutched at one of his ankles. ‘Let him go!’ I shrieked. ‘Kill me instead. Please!’
Bradshaw tried to kick me away from him. Grabbing his other ankle, I slithered between him and Ritchie, and yelled, ‘Kill me! Please! It’s all my fault. He has nothing to do with this.’
‘Don’t, San!’ Ritchie protested weakly, reaching out for me with one hand.
‘Tell me what damning evidence you have against me and I’ll spare him!’ Bradshaw snarled. ‘If not, the next shot’s blowing his head away.’ He pressed the barrel harder against Ritchie’s head with one hand, and squeezed his jaw with the other. ‘This baby has a silencer and the room is soundproof. No one’ll hear a peep.’
‘The c-care home!’ I spluttered. ‘It’s all my doing!’
‘Do you have any document that directly implicates me or EGG?’ Bradshaw boomed.
‘No! I have nothing against anyone! Please … please, please spare him.’
Bradshaw looked down at me pitifully.
‘Is that good enough for you?’ I screeched.
Bradshaw flashed a triumphant smile. ‘Aha! I thought as much!’
A growing cauldron of anger and despair razed my solar plexus. An animalistic growl erupted from the pit of my stomach as I pulled one of Bradshaw’s legs towards me. Bradshaw teetered to a side and fell flat on his stomach. His prosthetic had come off. For a moment, there was a deafening silence as he clipped it back on. I dragged myself closer to Ritchie. The nose of the barrel had gorged on his skin, leaving a rankling wound on his temple. I stroked his face and kissed him clumsily. ‘He’s going to kill us, San!’ he moaned.
I wondered about Aaron. It must have been half an hour or longer since he had left to get help and I was beginning to lose hope that anyone would come to our rescue now.
I felt my head snap back. Bradshaw was dragging me back by my hair. I squealed in pain. He jostled me towards a wall and issued a tight slap across my face. I keeled over to one side. I saw tufts of silky brown on the floor – clumps of my hair. Bradshaw pulled again at the roots of my hair until I was forced to face him, his nose just inches away from mine. A pair of daggers shot out in vivid streaks of saffron gold, alternatively dilating and contracting w
ith psychotic rage. But his voice held steady as he murmured, ‘The betrayed one pays the ultimate price of the betrayer.’
My joints and muscles pulsated with every permutation and combination of pain that must exist in eternity. I fought to keep my eyes open. Bradshaw tweaked one of my ravaged breasts. I couldn’t do more than mewl in numb distress. ‘You think I’ll have a common immigrant girl undo everything I’ve built over my sister’s blood?’ He shook his head. ‘You won’t ruin it for me. You will not bring down any more of my men. You and your lunkhead will not get in the way of my stem cell mission!’ A morbid grin blazed across his lips. ‘I’m putting an end to this rumpus once and for all.’ His voice assumed a singsong tone as he added with finality:‘Ta-da!’
I heard the barrel retract before me. I curled into a tight ball and braced myself for the inevitable.
And then, three shots rang off in the air, one after the other.
Epilogue
10 days later
I sipped my Earl Grey and groggily skimmed through a pile of newspapers.
An article in The Independent: ‘Girl, 19, busts sex racket. Lord Melvin Bradshaw arrested’.
A more even-handed feature in The Telegraph: ‘Bradshaw meets his waterloo, 30 children rescued from Strattonshire’.
A dramatic story in the Mirror: ‘Teen triumphs over US-born British Lord’.
‘Happy birthday, San!’ Ritchie greeted, rolling over to my bedside in a wheelchair. ‘You aren’t a teen anymore now, are you?’ He gingerly set a box of Lindor Truffles White Chocolates down on the bed. I leaned forward and kissed him tenderly, careful not to disturb the cast on his leg.
‘Charlotte’s up and about,’ I mentioned.
‘We’ll visit her once we get outta here,’ Ritchie said, stroking my hair.
‘How are the kids?’
Victims for Sale Page 28